Go green, save the planet...

Wednesday 22 April

Earth Day, eh? But shouldn't every day be Earth Day?

It’s Earth Day, so green gadgets are hot on the agenda again. But there are those out there who are skeptical about the good that merely turning to eco-friendly gadgets might have. They’d argue that switching to the dubiously-marketed eco-tech to make us feel smug is like trying to prevent an oncoming tidal wave – impossible. But saying that is ignoring the problem.

We admit that some manufacturers are a bit too quick to jump onto the “green” bandwagon, labelling their products as “their most eco-friendly laptop yet”, when all they really are is 5 per cent more efficient than their previous product, which was an energy-guzzling, power-wasting machine anyway.

That said, the onslaught of tech that’s coming to the market that’s independent of simple energy reduction and focussing on producing its own energy is starting to increase. If the tech that’s used by the Samsung Blue Earth mobile phone, for example, (which uses photovoltaic cells to store the sun’s rays) is employed on a wider scale, we’d see a dramatic drop in mains-charging devices.

There’s a definite shift in the gadget world. And we’re going in the right direction (no matter how slowly). Consumers want less waste, and techniques are being developed to accomplish this. Whether we’re getting power from the sun, water, wind, (even mud!) we have to keep developing environmentally-friendly gadgets, striving for minimum-carbon-producing energy. When we achieve that. Then we can start to feel smug.